Video Transcript: Role Clarity

Welcome back. We're continuing with our course developing great commission  skills. And with this video, we're going to be taking a look at role clarity. Role  clarity. You know, last time we looked at ministry clarity, a broader picture. Now  we're moving into role clarity. Well, what exactly is role clarity? Well, let's think  about that for a moment. It's helpful to have roles among staff and leaders that  are clearly defined, regular evaluations and accountability that's going to keep  us on task. Our concern is role clarity within the context of great commission  ministry. You know, I realize that I'm talking about great commission ministry  over and over and over again, but that's the point, right? This whole course is  about developing great commission skills so that we can be great commission  leaders who lead Great Commission churches. That's what this is all about. So  we're concerned with role clarity in that we want our roles as leaders to be  connected centrally with the Great Commission itself. Now, how are we going to  do that? Well, I'm going to introduce you to a tool, and that tool is called the  Great Commission matrix. Now in setting up our discussion in regard to the  Great Commission matrix, I want to I want to speak to you about a paradigm  shift. Conventional approaches to ministry are typically centered on the  question, how do we minister to our congregation? Now the idea is that if we  minister well to our congregation over and over and over again, very  consistently, that again, that assumption that we talked about a few sessions  ago, that that ministry, that gospel ministry, that great commission ministry, will  then spill out of our people into the community is just going to naturally happen.  But what I've learned is that that doesn't happen. That's a faulty assumption. So  we want to shift the paradigm from that question, how do we minister to our  congregation to this, how do we minister through our congregation in order to  reach a lost community? Now the bulk of this video is going to center on a  discussion of the Great Commission matrix and and, so I want to share with you  that particular chart, the Great Commission matrix. Now don't panic. This is  going to be on your screen for a goodly number of minutes, so you'll have plenty of time to think this through as I unpack it for you. So what you are looking at is  what we call the Great Commission matrix. You'll notice that there is a vertical  axis and a horizontal axis, the vertical axis on the left, from bottom to top. Starts  with outreach, which is the Go element, and it moves up to evangelism, which is the make element, and it moves further up to discipleship, that is the disciples  element, so in kind of a loose connection, from bottom to top, we have go make  disciples through the means of outreach, evangelism and discipleship. Now you  might recall that we have labeled those three as ministry movements. We don't  have an outreach program in the church or an outreach team in the church. We  have an outreach movement in the church, meaning that outreach threads  through every ministry of the church. Every ministry in the church is going to  develop the capacity to do outreach, to get outside of the church and build  relationships with people. We move up to evangelism. Evangelism happens 

when the gospel is clearly shared with folks who are outside of the faith.  Evangelism is a movement. It threads through every ministry. Area of the  church, so that every ministry in the church develops a capacity to do  evangelism, and then we move up to discipleship. The disciples element, the  maturity element, evangelism gets us across the starting line of salvation, but  discipleship grows us in our faith until we reach maturity, until we become what  true worshipers, worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth. Discipleship is a  movement. We want every ministry area of the church to be discipling people,  so every ministry in the church will develop the capacity to do outreach,  evangelism and discipleship. That's what's going on with the vertical axis on the  left. Now across the top of the matrix, you see these designations of ministry  one, ministry two, ministry three, etc. These are basically placeholders that  represent the different ministry areas of the church. So at the top of these  vertical columns, you might see things like youth ministry or women's ministry or small groups ministry or whatever they might be. So these are somewhat  generic in terms of how the chart is being laid out, but any and every ministry  area can occupy one of those vertical columns. And of course, there can be  many more ministries than just six. By the way. Word to the wise, I'm going to  explain to you how this matrix works, and I certainly would encourage using this  matrix, but perhaps not try to do this in every ministry area all at once. Select  two or three priority ministries and start there, and then add another. Add  another, add another, until eventually all ministry areas of the church are  organizing their ministries through the grid of the Great Commission matrix. Now what we're doing with this you see, is we are equipping, we are empowering.  We are mobilizing the entire church represented by every ministry area to get  our folks prepared to go out and work in the harvest as skilled laborers. Now,  one thing that I want to clarify, I have been accused with this model of sort of  mistreating the congregation or using them in some way, shortchanging them,  because my emphasis is on reaching out to the community. But nothing could be further from the truth. Here's what actually happens when people inside the  church are equipped, empowered, mobilized for ministry and are given the  opportunity to truly serve God well by going out from the church, you know, As  the Father has sent me, so I am sending you to go out from the church to  minister in the harvest, their own spiritual maturity is going to accelerate much  more so than having them simply sit passively in the church and receive  teaching that beefs Up, perhaps their knowledge, but doesn't engage them in  ministry action. So no one is being shortchanged here. Everyone is being  accelerated in their spiritual development. All right, so when you minister  through the congregation, this is how you do that. Now, what you see in these  little boxes, you see strategy 1, 2, 3, again. These are just placeholders to  represent the actual strategies that you might come up with that would fill in  those boxes. So let me give you an example, so that you can see how how this 

works. Let's say, for example, that ministry area number three is youth ministry,  ministry to teenagers. Now the question is not going to be, how do we minister  to the youth of the church. The question is going to be, how do we minister  through the youth of the church to reach the youth out in the community? Well,  those folks who are leaders in youth ministry will come down to the bottom level  of the matrix outreach, and will design two or three outreach strategies for how  youth ministry is going to connect with teenagers in the community and begin to  build relationships. Then they're going to move up to the next level evangelism,  and they're going to design two or three evangelism strategies for how the  gospel is going to be articulated clearly to the teenagers that respond to  outreach. Then we move to the top level discipleship, and those leaders in youth ministry are going to design two or three possible tools, pathways of discipling,  teenagers who have made professions of faith through evangelism as they grow in their faith. Now imagine that this is happening in every ministry area of the  church. You see those little arrows down at the bottom of the matrix. What that  represents is the reality of every ministry area of the church going out into the  community to make connection, to build relationships, to draw people into  relationship that open the door of possibility for sharing the faith, sharing the  gospel through evangelism and then moving folks as they come across the line  of salvation into discipleship up on the third tier. Now to be candid in real life, it  never works quite that simply, quite that black and white, that clean, okay? But if  all of these things are in place, ministry will begin to happen. Now the  conventional church tends to use the Sunday worship service as the primary  front door to the church. So the idea is that if we can get people to visit on a  Sunday morning, and their experience with our church is positive, then maybe  they will stay with us and eventually trickle down into what's, let's call it, the  departmental levels of the church, where they Connect with children's ministry,  youth, men, women, small groups, be on the worship team, whatever it might  be, and most of those ministries are inwardly focused. And so the opportunity for outreach and evangelism somewhat dies there. But what we're saying is, no, we don't want that single front door of a Sunday morning worship service. We want  every ministry to be an open front door. And not only do we want it to be open,  we want to send that ministry out so that the doors to connecting with us are all  over the community in multiple ways. That's how we really spread ourselves out  and really go giving us the opportunity to make disciples. So the Great  Commission matrix is the key strategic tool that's going to allow us to penetrate  into the community with the love, the grace, the Mercy, the person of Jesus  Christ. Now on a strategic level, I want you to think about a couple of things. I  think back to our discussion in an earlier session of the four disciplines of a  great commission church. Now combine those four disciplines, preemptive  prayer, basic Bible, cost commitment, missional multiplication. Combine that  with the Great Commission matrix, where every ministry area is able to go out 

into the community to do outreach, to do evangelism, to do discipleship. Those  two tools in combination, are your primary strategic tools that will both grow your people on the inside of the church in terms of their spiritual development, and  will help you to reach people on the outside of the church that need Jesus, those people that are still part of that plentiful harvest. And you see, with all the things  that we've been talking about through all of these videos, what we're doing is  we're becoming more and more skilled at the labor of going into the harvest and  gathering that harvest, that family, into the family of God, those scattered sheep. We are now part of that search and rescue mission that was first the property of  God the Father, then God the Son, and now us through God the Spirit, as we  reach out and we bring in that plentiful harvest, and we keep bringing that  harvest in as the gospel moves forward until one of these days when it pleases  God to do so, Jesus will return. The end will come and behold a multitude to  numerous to count, praising God and saying, holy, holy. Holy is the Lord God  Almighty. The whole earth is filled with His glory. Amen. Now I've got one more  thing that I want to share with you inside of this particular video, and it comes  from a book that I have actually written myself, along with a co-author, a  gentleman by the name of Steve Ogne. Now, just so you'll know Steve Ogne  has gone to be with the Lord a few years back, he was a man that suffered  greatly from medical problems, but remained faithful through great travail. And  what am I about to share with you, the leadership ladder was actually Steve's  idea, and I worked with Steve to help him write a book that captured the  essence of the leadership ladder in book form. And then later, after Steve had  passed and gone to be with the Lord, I developed a workbook to go along with  that, so that, you know, we would have a practical application of the book. What  I would like to do in the remaining few minutes of this video is just explain to you how the leadership ladder works, and it ties in very well with the matrix. It ties in  very well with the four disciplines of a great commission church. So let me go  there, and what I just put up on your screen is an outline of the leadership  ladder. We're going to be starting at the bottom and working our way up so the  concept of a ladder, the reason Steve went with this particular image, think  about a ladder with two side rails and six rungs Moving from bottom to top. The  side rails are are identified as this. One side rail is called Building biblical  knowledge. The other side rail is called Building biblical character. You know, we never, we never get to the point in this life where we know all the Bible we ever  need to know like there's nothing more to be learned. There's always more to be learned in terms of Bible knowledge. There's also more character to be  developed. Biblical character, we never reach that point of having figured it all  out, of reaching perfection, of reaching absolute obedience. So until the very  day we die, there's a need for us to continue to build biblical knowledge and  build biblical character. And so the leadership ladder book and workbook help in  our development in that way it helps, it helps us as leaders in terms of our self 

development, but it also helps us as leaders to develop others in terms of their  biblical knowledge and their biblical character. Now, using this analogy. The  ladder, one of the things that I just want to point out is that, you know, the side  rails of a ladder are attached to every rung. So as we talk our way up the rungs  of the ladder, the six rungs of the ladder bear in mind that each of these rungs  on either side is embedded into a side rail. So each of these rungs has to do  with being part of each rung. Now I tell you what I need to interrupt for a moment because something has become unplugged. So give me about 10 seconds to  take care of that, and I will be right back. Okay, I'm back. I apologize for that, but I just noticed on my computer that all of a sudden it said battery low, and my  cord had become unplugged. Things ever like that happened to you? Okay,  where was I? Side Rails, biblical character, biblical knowledge. And now we're  going to take a look at the six rungs, starting at the bottom rung number one is  called Living missionally. Now the idea here is that we and the people we lead  are to adopt lives that are missional, lives that are on mission. We're out in the  community, in our lives, our neighborhood, our schools, our jobs, our recreation,  whatever we're doing. We're living missionally. In other words, we're looking for  opportunity to come alongside and connect with people and help them get to  Jesus, help them get to the into the family of God. The second wrong making  disciples, this is the more content laid inside. It's not so much about relationship. We establish relationship as we live missionally, but when we get to the rung of  making disciples, we're now looking for opportunity to actually deliver the gospel and perhaps to disciple people in their walk with the Lord. The next rung up,  number three is called mobilizing ministry. This is the rung at which folks who  have come to Christ and probably have come into the church are given the  opportunity to serve in some way, they're being mobilized for ministry. Now the  next level up is called leading ministry. So some of the people that become  servants in ministry are going to move up to actually leading ministry and take  on leadership positions in the ministry areas in which they work. The next above  that, number five, is leading leaders. You know, some of those folks who grow  into leading ministry will grow further into being leaders of leaders. And then  ultimately, at the top run, there is planting churches. You know that's the the  biggest multiplier of all is that when we start developing other churches, we  multiply, not just disciples, not just leaders, but now we're multiplying churches.  So that progression starts at the bottom, with us connecting with people through  living missionally, helping them get to Christ, through making disciples, helping  them serve, through mobilizing ministry, helping them lead by leading ministry,  helping them advance their leadership to leading leaders And leading further  into actually going out from the church and planting other churches, all the while  continuing to be connected with the building of biblical knowledge and the  building of biblical character. Now, one thing I want to point out before I wrap this up, we have observed that in many, many churches, those first two rungs don't 

exist. You know, the mandate to live missionally, the mandate to make disciples,  isn't really present. It's not emphasized. The church's ministries tend to start at  the level of mobilizing ministry, getting people involved in ministry only. They're  not getting involved in ministry that goes out. They're getting involved in ministry  inside ministry to the congregation, not through the congregation. Now, some of  those folks might become leaders of ministry, some might come leaders of  leaders, but indeed, they're focused on leadership inside of the church, not  leadership that goes out and then the top rung is not there either. There's no  planting of churches. There's no significant multiplication outside of ourselves.  So the six rung ladder has become a three rung ladder that only functions inside the church as we talk to ourselves, as we serve each other. So the model of the  leadership ladder in both the book and the workbook is designed to help  churches develop missional leaders in the church who lead missionally in the  church, so that folks from the church can be sent out the side rails, building  biblical knowledge, building biblical character. The rungs, living missionally,  making disciples, mobilizing ministry, leading ministry, leading leaders, planting  churches. So I encourage you to get hold of the leadership ladder. Some of what we cover in this course that I have created is is available to you free of charge  through downloads. Unfortunately, the leadership ladder is not one of those. The leadership ladder is formally published through a different published, through a  publisher, and I don't have the the permission to just give that away, but if you're  interested, just go online and google the leadership ladder. Can Kenneth Priddy,  Steven Ogne, and I'm sure you'd be able to find where to where you can get that book. So lots and lots of different constructs that we've covered here with this  session. Final thing I want to say is this, in terms of reinforcement, you know, if  we don't continue to press this issue, it's going to disappear. So in order to  remain effective, we've got to reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. How do we do that? We do that through regular evaluation and through accountability. We evaluate  ourselves to see how we're doing, to see if we're following through, to see if  we're getting the outcomes, to see if we're getting the lag measures that we're  shooting for. And we hold ourselves accountable to being faithful to the Great  Commission, being faithful to going and making disciples, baptizing, teaching  obedience, all to the glory of God. So that wraps up this video. We've been  taking a look at role clarity as we continue with our study. Now our next session,  which will be the final session in regard to working with staff and leaders is going to focus on the skill topic, healthy communications. So until then, I pray for  God's blessing on your efforts of ministry, your efforts at study and  preparedness, and eventually, your efforts in moving the gospel into the harvest  in the name of Jesus amen